English
Hotel Club (present day French-Mozambican Cultural Centre)
Maputo [Lourenço Marques], Maputo, Mozambique
Equipment and Infrastructures
Built in King Luís Avenue (present day Samora Machel), planned to be the official headquarters and casino, it was begun in 1898 as a club-casino. According to some authors it is a work by architects Wells & Inc., built by Rochelle & Smith. Nonetheless, there is mention of seven photographs of Maputo taken by Thomas Lee, a photographer from Barbeton (South Africa), in 1889, which already include the building (Grand Monde da Imagem e da Fotografia em Portugal, by Ângela Camila Castelo Branco and António Faria). In 1917 it became an Hotel with a 50 room extension by architect P. Teeby, built by Were & Fletcher. It represents a fine example of the so-called “iron architecture” applied to a residential construction of colonial-tropical model from 1900: with a long roofed gallery wrapped around the building – with a corresponding porch-like structure on the second floor, also roofed-provides shade and serves as its structure. These long galleries are punctuated by slender cylindrical metal pillars, and, on the ground level, they support a curved roof, which, along with the access stairs, evoke the Indo-Portuguese design of many traditional porches (such as the Episcopal Palace of Old Goa, India). Restored in the 1990s, it is presently the headquarters of the French-Mozambican Cultural Centre.
